


The World is Changing

by Dragestil



Series: Brother of Mine [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Brotherhood, Brotherly Love, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-11 00:37:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12923550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragestil/pseuds/Dragestil
Summary: Hanzo and Genji's relationship fell to pieces with a single act of unspeakable violence. But times have changed. Can a broken bond be reforged?





	The World is Changing

**Author's Note:**

> If you would like to see more of my work, please visit my [Tumblr](http://dragestil.tumblr.com)

It had finally happened. Hanzo was cornered. He had returned to Shimada Castle for reasons he had yet to name, and they had been waiting for him. He should have seen it coming. He should have known that it was only a matter of time. He had started returning during New Year’s festivities, but changing the date of his return would not keep those hunting him away forever. Consistency and patterns were fatal flaws that had caught up to him at last.

“You are defenseless now,” a man said, spinning one of Hanzo’s arrows idly between his fingers. “Did you think our master would forget you so easily?”

“I have the advantage. This is my home,” Hanzo replied, though he knew his options were limited.

His bow had been snatched from his left side while he was distracted by an assailant coming at him from the right. He was internally cursing himself for becoming careless and too caught up in his own mind. He had missed all of the warning signs he was sure there must have been. And now he would pay the price. His only hope was the sword resting in the shrine before him, but he was far from a master with the blade and there were at least four people around him.

“You have no chance of survival, Hanzo. Surely you can see that. Outnumbered, without your precious bow. You’ve made too many mistakes. Familiarity cannot save you now.”

They were toying with him now, circling their prey as they planned the final blow. They even allowed him to grab the ceremonial sword. What difference would it make in the end? Even if the sword had been his primary weapon, he could not hope to defeat them all surely. His fingers tightened around the grip.

“Hanzo!”

He looked up. And there was Genji, not the Genji he had so nearly killed but the one reborn under Overwatch’s careful gaze. Three shuriken found their marks effortlessly, and Hanzo came to his senses quickly enough to roll to one side, trading the sword he had grabbed for his bow from the attacker who had seized it. He nocked an arrow and drew back as he turned to point the tip at the final assailant. Genji dashed to his side with his katana drawn.

“Who sent you?” Hanzo asked, confidence regained as soon as his bow was in his grasp.

“I would never give up my master to you.”

“You are outnumbered now. You cannot defeat us.”

“I have failed, but you will not get anything out of me,” the would-be-assassin said before biting down on something he had pulled from his pocket.

Hanzo sighed as his attacker fell heavily to the floor. He had been hoping to at least get a hint as to who was so keen on having him dead, but he supposed he ought to simply be thankful for his continued existence. He was already thinking of disposing of the corpses when he remembered why exactly he was still alive. He snapped out of his mind and back to the present, turning to his brother.

“How did you know?”

“That you would be here, or that  _ they _ would be here?”

“Both.”

“When we last spoke, you were still seeking something from this place. I had forgiven you, but you still could not find peace within yourself. I knew you would not risk returning at the same time, so I visited as often as I could, to keep an eye on you.”   
“You? Keeping an eye on me?”

“I hoped you would find what you were looking for.”

“What  _ am _ I looking for then?”

“You must forgive yourself, Hanzo. Look at what is happening around you. Look at the world. You could help fight back. I know you, brother. I know you want to atone for what you did.”

“How can I forgive myself? How can I call myself a man when I turned on my own brother? I left you for dead! How could  _ you _ forgive me?!”

Genji sheathed his katana, turning toward Hanzo and placing one hand on his brother’s shoulder as the other slipped off the faceplate of his helmet. He met and held Hanzo’s gaze, steady as a mountain.

“Because you are my brother. And you have changed. You are not the reckless head of the Shimada clan, clawing for power and glory. You left everything behind, turning your back on what you knew to become someone different. You made yourself suffer because of your hatred for what you did. But hasn’t there been enough hatred? You have searched for so long for something you can only find in yourself.”

“Where did you learn all of this? Are you still the same Genji who would practice climbing on the gates and writing your name as high up as you could manage?”

Genji laughed, and Hanzo tried to hear his brother’s voice as it was in his memories. Though there were distinctly inhuman tones, the laughter was familiar. He thought of long past days when they were both young and free from the burden of adulthood. He yearned for snowball fights in winter and their mother’s disapproving tuts when they came in soaked and shivering with smiles from ear to ear. He exhaled shakily.

“You’ve changed too,” Hanzo murmured, looking away.

“I lost myself. When Overwatch found me,  _ fixed _ me, I was so angry. I fought to destroy our clan - to destroy the thing that caused you to...do what you did. But I never felt any better. And then I looked at myself, and I wasn’t who I thought I was. Was I even myself at all anymore? Overwatch put me back together, but they had to add so much to me, so many ‘enhancements.’ So I left Overwatch. I didn’t know what to do anymore. Killing people didn’t bring any closure. My body didn’t feel like my own. But...I found myself again. It took time. And Zenyatta’s help. If I’m wise at all, it’s because of him. He’s an omnic monk, and my closest companion. But I still write my name when I reach new heights. I am still Genji, your brother.”

Hanzo could not help himself. He had fought against himself for so long. He had had countless nightmares about the day he shattered his own sense of honour. He had replayed in his head almost daily Genji’s words from their first reunion - the moment he learned that he had not truly killed his brother. After so many years on his own, he had just stood alongside his brother against assassins sent to kill him. And it was too much to hold onto his composure any longer.

He sank to his knees, laying his bow and quiver beside him. He closed his eyes against the waves of emotion that threatened to sink him. He felt Genji settle in front of him and cold metal fingers found his shoulders. He raised a hand to grip Genji’s forearm, needing a physical anchor to tie him down to earth when his mind wanted to flee. He had been running away for so long; he had almost forgotten what it was like to face the storm head on. 

“I put the clan before my own brother,” he said quietly, eyes still shut as his head hung low. “I used the orders of the elders to excuse the inexcusable. How could I forget my own promises to look after you? And then you show up here, and you are a ghost from my past, but you aren’t dead. I almost shot you even then!”

“But you didn’t. And you weren’t going to. Not after you realised it was me. You acted like you would, but that isn’t you. You could never stomach killing your own brother - not when they told you to put me in line and not when I found you last time. You have too much heart to kill without feeling.”

“You truly have forgiven me, haven’t you?”

“Of course I have. It was part of my journey. I heard what happened - after I got away from Overwatch I tried to find out what happened to you. I had been sent to destroy our clan, but I never ran into you. So I asked questions, hung around the arcade, tried to drop little hints that would make people talk about where you had gone.”

“What did they say?” Hanzo asked, finally looking up to meet Genji’s eyes.

“That you disappeared. You killed your own brother and lost your mind and vanished. Even back then there were rumours about you burning incense in the castle every year.”

“How long did you know?”

“A while. I was still angry. I was still trying to find answers or myself or peace. Sometimes I thought about killing you. You were strong - I saw you fight assassins like it was nothing - but I was remade into a weapon.”

“Why didn’t you kill me then?”

“I was trying to prove I was more than what Overwatch turned me into. I felt like a monster, and the only hope I had left was fighting any urge that would prove I was only good for violence. And eventually Zenyatta’s words worked their way into my head properly. I started to see that even though Overwatch changed my physical body, they could not change  _ me _ . I realised I wasn’t mad at you anymore.”

“How could you put away your anger like that? After everything I had done.”

“I realised you felt like I did. You were lost too. You did something that made you question everything about yourself, and couldn’t find peace, and I knew I could forgive you, because we both needed it.”

“We ought to dispose of these bodies,” Hanzo said after a moment, pulling away from Genji and standing up. He needed to focus on something besides all that had been said for at least a few minutes. It all weighed heavy on him, and he needed a break to breathe, to sort through everything tumbling around inside of him.

“Over the back wall should be fine. No one will miss them save their master, and he will already be sending more after you, so it hardly matters what he thinks anyway.”

“Remember when we were kids and we would throw pebbles from the top of the wall to see whose could go further?”

“I remember winning a lot more than I should have. You were older than me but somehow your throws ended up falling short.”

“You were always so excited to win. I didn’t need to. Giving you confidence was more important than proving I could beat my little brother.”

Genji smiled, and it was almost the same smile Hanzo knew from their youth. He tried to see the Genji he knew in this drastically altered body. He tried to imagine what might lay within the well-polished, form-fitted armour. He tried  _ not _ to think about how  _ much _ of Genji was within. He had been ruthless, and he couldn’t even imagine how Overwatch had managed to piece his brother back together. They fell into silence as they quickly split to retrieve the corpses around them. Once they were done, they sat on the balcony, legs dangling over the edge as they stared up at the sky.

“The stars are still the same,” Genji said. “Remember when we used to make up our own constellations?”

“How could I forget? There’s the sparrow,” Hanzo replied, pointing up to a cluster of stars they had imagined into the form of a bird. “You named that one yourself.”

“And then you wouldn’t stop calling me Sparrow.”

“It’s only fair for an older brother to nickname his younger brother.”

Sitting like this, reminiscing about their youth, it was easy to forget how long had passed since this was normal. And Hanzo could feel himself letting go - of the self-loathing and the pain and the self-imposed isolation. He felt warm, despite the chill of the night. He turned to look at Genji and the hints of a grin appeared on his lips.

“Looks like you finally got the height advantage on me,” he said, “but only just! Don’t get too cocky.”

“Me? Cocky? Unheard of!”

They laughed, and it felt almost like they had never fallen so far apart. They sat for a few minutes pointing out constellations from their childhood. They talked about everything, about nothing, and it felt remarkably good just to talk. The scars of their past still lingered, but they were healing. They only ached when prodded.

“Zenyatta will be wondering where I’ve gotten off to,” Genji said eventually as he scooted away from the edge of the balcony and stood up. He offered a hand to Hanzo to pull him up to his feet.

“Thank you, Genji,” Hanzo replied as he took Genji’s extended hand. He didn’t let go of it as soon as he was standing, though. “The world  _ is _ changing. And I will choose the side that allows me to fight beside you, the way it should have been.”

“I knew there was still hope.”

“Let me know when you need me, and where.”

“Keep your eyes open.”

“I will. They will not catch me off guard again.”

“I’ll see you soon, Hanzo.”

“You will,” Hanzo assured, pulling his brother into a hug for as long as he dare. “Now get going. You have someone who is expecting you. Take care of him.”

“Only if you take care of yourself. You’ve been on your own too long.”

“Maybe so. I’ve heard rumours that Overwatch has recalled its agents.”

“They aren’t going to come after you. You’re not a threat to them.”

“I know. If they are reforming...I will offer my bow to their cause. If they saved you, if you believe in them still, it would be honourable to serve their cause.”

“I’ll let them know you’re coming. No more running.”

“No more running.”


End file.
